Women walking the Dorset landscape
Our walks
Someone described these walks as ‘rewilding the body and brain’. Walking puts you back in touch, not just with nature and natural processes, it also rebalances your personal ecosystem. Walking clears out the noise of modern life and lets your own landscape emerge. Findlater & Sisters’ walks are designed for a range of abilities and distances. Before each walk you will receive detailed instructions for accessing the start point. Our preferred location finder is What Three Words. Click on the dates below to book a walk with us soon. Our walks are free.
Renewal and hope in the Dorset hills
BOOK NOW: new dates soon
(7.5 miles. A few steep ascents)
10.00am - 2pm
On this walk, as well as revelling in the longer days, we’ll encounter a Dorset woman whose actions gave others a chance to live, and whose story is part of our Dorset landscape.
From Abbotsbury, we’ll climb up to the Iron Age hill forts and ceremonial stones where the ancient people of Dorset celebrated the coming of Spring. Then, passing Ashley Chase House and the ruin of St Luke’s Chapel, we’ll remember a cook for the Milne-Watson family called Mitzi Ponlechner, who saved the lives of her former employers by helping them flee Nazi Germany for safety in England. This walk takes us into timeless Dorset, deep history, and a story of sanctuary which resonates today.
A Valley of Dorset Women
(10 Miles. Moderate – a few short steep hills)
10.00am - 3.30pm
Starting at the head of the Cerne Valley with a good stride along the Wessex Ridgeway, this walk encounters the lives of diverse and special Dorset women. If you’ve read Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, you’ll be familiar with Diggory Venn the ‘reddle man’, who travelled Dorset selling red ochre (reddle) to mark sheep. We’ll explore the path of Mary Ann Bull, a real reddle woman who visited local farms selling ochre. We will also meet a sculptor, a farmer, and a musician who died tragically young - all women whose stories are uncovered as we walk this walk landscape of women in history and modern memory.
The Valley of Stones
BOOK NOW: New dates soon
(5 miles. Gentle ascents)
10.00am - 2.00pm
This walk puts us in touch with the bones of ancient Dorset. We start with the Valley of the Stones near Little Bredy, an impressive scattering of sarsen stones decorating the valley with only the second recorded polissoir in the UK. This polishing stone is evidence that neolithic man and woman crafted their tools here 5,000 years ago. The Durotriges, the Iron Age tribe who occupied this part of Dorset were matriarchal, so we’ll celebrate the power of our female ancestors as we visit some of their earliest gathering sites. This ambling walk will visit other standing stones, The Grey Mare and her Colts, but mostly we’ll have a jolly good walk deep in the Dorset countryside.
Hidden Sapphic Dorset
BOOK NOW: Sunday 7th June
(8.7 miles. A few sharp ascents)
10.00am - 3.30pm
In the 1930s Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner set up home together in the village of Chaldon Herring, near Lulworth. They joined in village life and lived happily in this very rural outpost for many years. Sylvia wrote for The New Yorker and was an eminent musicologist, Valentine her lover and a poet. Other notable residents included Elizabeth Muntz, a sculptor and the literary Powys brothers. We’ll start our walk at Ringstead and journey along the breathtaking Jurassic Coast before going inland to Chaldon Herring, and heading back.
Shoreline, Saints and Sea
BOOK NOW: Sunday 21st June
(5 miles. Some short steep ascents – worth it for the views)
10.00am - 1.30pm
A rewarding walk through 5000 years of history on this circular route. Walking anti-clockwise from the car park, we’ll glimpse the ruined site of the monastery at Abbotsbury. St Catherine’s Chapel is complete and overlooks Chesil Beach. During the Medieval period St Catherine of Alexandria had a large female following. Her patronage included unmarried women, nurses, milliners, teachers and librarians. Many unmarried women made the pilgrimage to Abbotsbury to pray for a husband! As well a visit to the chapel we’ll enjoy the stunning views of the Jurassic Coast and Chesil Beach from the ridgeway, walk along the beach, and finish with an optional visit to the Chesil café.
Rena Gardiner: Chronicler of the Dorset landscape
BOOK NOW: Sunday 28th June
(6.5 miles. Easy, one gentle rise at the beginning of the walk)
10.30am - 2.00pm
Rena Gardiner (1929-99) was a gifted and prolific printmaker. Another unsung Dorset heroine that should be more widely known. In 1965 she gave up teaching at Bournemouth School for Girls to focus on producing illustrations for guide books commissioned by The National Trust. Sleeping in her trusty Dormobile van while on sketching trips from Cumbria to Cornwall, she captured the essence of the English countryside. Rena lived alone in her thatched cottage in Tarrant Monkton, near Blandford. It was here she set up The Workshop Press in her garage producing guidebooks and linocuts celebrating the Dorset coast and countryside. She was a force of energy, researching, sketching, designing, printing, and producing the books herself. A physically demanding task which she did with a little help from friends. Since her death in 1999, she has received some recognition through a publication about her life. It’s surely time for an exhibition of her work?
Our walk will start at the Langton Arms in Tarrant Monkton, a village of thatched cottages and ducks. A circular walk through ancient beech woods opening up to wide views across the Cranborne Chase.
Coast, Carving, and Compass: Mary Spencer Watson
BOOK NOW: New dates soon
(7 miles. Some steep ascents)
10.00am - 2.30pm
The rugged landscape and stone of Dorset has been the inspiration for so many women artists. This walk follows the Purbeck coast where the sculptor Mary Spencer Watson (1913-2006) lived. The numerous quarries near her home at Dunshay Manor supplied the material for her artwork which was in great demand during her lifetime.
Starting at Worth Matravers, we’ll take the path to Chapman’s Pool and on to St Aldhelm’s chapel, along the coastal path and back to Worth Matravers, to finish at the Square and Compass pub.
Sherborne, Suffragettes, and Sapphic love
BOOK NOW: Sunday 26th July
(7.5 miles. Some mild ascents)
10.00am - 2.00pm
Evelina Haverfield was a fearless suffragette who not only championed women’s rights, but challenged the heteronormativity of Edwardian life. Evelina’s childhood home was a Scottish castle, she married well and lived the life of a privileged Edwardian society lady at West Hall, near Sherborne. But it was the fight for women’s rights that became her passion. In 1909 she held the inaugural meeting of the Sherborne branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in the Digby Hotel. Impatient, however, with their peaceful approach to securing change, she joined Emeline Pankhurst’s WPSU and embraced the direct action of the militant suffragists. It was in London that she met Vera ‘Jack’ Holmes, an actress, suffragette and chauffeur for Emmeline Pankhurst. Turning her back on her marriage Eveline, Eve, became Vera’s lover and they were together for the rest of Eve’s life. United in their determination that women should get the vote, they both went to Holloway prison for their actions. Eve was arrested for hitting a policeman. Her response: ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough, I’ll bring my revolver next time.’ The outbreak of World War One meant that many suffragettes were deployed in munitions and as nurses to support the war effort. Jack and Eve played their part too. They ran field hospitals and drove ambulances near the front line of war in Russia and Serbia where Eve died in 1920 of pneumonia.
Join us on circular walk of Sherborne exploring Eve and Jack’s life.